Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1900 — Side Lights on. the Boer War. [ARTICLE]

Side Lights on. the Boer War.

The Dutch settled In Cape Colony nearly- twenty years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Bock and have been there ever since. It was in the first year of the seventeentJi century that the Dutch Bast Indies Company landed the first party of Dutch farmers in what is now Cape Colony. So in thia present fateful year the Dutch are completing the third century of their sojourn in South Africa. It was not, however, till 1051 that they erected a fort on the present site of Cape Town. A British medical corps officer, writing home from Lndysmith in January, described a scene in which a party of Boers, under the Red Cross flag, helped to bury the British dead. “There was one very touching incident,” he wrote. “After our major had read the burial service one of the Boers stepped out and said a short prayer, hoping the war would soon end, and while we stood with heads uncovered, they sang a hymn in Dutch.” The distinction of being the first soldier, officer or private to be recommended for the Victoria Cross during the present way belongs to Capt. Congreve of the Rifle Brigade. At the battle of Coienso this officer made a most gallant effort to prevent some of the British guns from falling into the hands of the Boers. •,*—,« « Col. Baden-Powell, the gallant and resourceful defender of Mafeking, has quite a remarkable sense-of locality. He Is able by some instinct to find his way about a totally unexplored country, and always to turn np just where >e wished —or. thereabout. The natives think he is “uncanny.” • Colenso, the town in which the British forces have been operating, and which has figured frequently in the dispatches from the seat of war, is named after Dr. Colenso, formerly bishop of Natal. His memory is still revered by the Boers, for whom he is said to have done an Immense amount of good. Doctors at the front In South Africa, commenting on what they prononnee “a war of wonderful wounds,” say the only wound that is necessarily fatal ia penetration of the heart Ninety per cent of the wounded in Buller’s army have recovered. The plight of the people of Ladysmith at the time of their relief was an awful one, for beside reduced rations—horse and mule flesh was the principal diet—there was a great deal of sickness. Wh*n Duller entered the town he found •ear 800 eases at typhoid fever.